


For Lost Time

by rosequartzstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Emotional, Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, Post-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Reunions, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Wolfstar oneshot, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24983569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosequartzstars/pseuds/rosequartzstars
Summary: After a year of teaching at Hogwarts, a defeated and dejected Remus Lupin returns home to his dilapidated cottage, hopeless as to what the future holds. But, waiting for him before he's off on his fugitive hideaway, is his long-lost Sirius Black, having come to spend one final night in his arms. (Wolfstar oneshot)
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 37





	For Lost Time

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this oneshot developed from this Tumblr post (https://brothersblack.tumblr.com/post/127264628991/imagine-remus-lupin-after-the-events-of-prisoner), for which reason I suppose I must duly acknowledge it, considering I couldn't stop thinking about it after I'd seen it. :)

_Merlin_ , he was so tired.

Not that he hadn't practically lived in a state of perpetual exhaustion for the past twelve years or so —alone, abandoned, hopeless—, but the year at Hogwarts he'd thought would revitalize him had only turned out to drain him beyond any measure he would've thought possible.

Remus never thought he'd be glad to see the rickety outline of his Yorkshire cottage: it may not be much (hell, it was barely _anything_ , so rundown was it), but at this moment, it was all he had to call home. And, with the devastation of having had to leave Hogwarts a second time, this time with all the more sense of fatal finality, home was what he needed.

And to think that he'd been sure he wouldn't have to come back! That he'd been certain the year would go smoothly, and Dumbledore would gladly help him find a different place to stay in between school years, that he'd closed the book on the chapter of his misery this cottage had been witness to.

 _No such luck,_ he thought bitterly as he put his hand outward and twisted the doorknob, listening to the familiar creak of the derelict wooden door that served as a welcome fanfare to his arrival. _I'm back, aren't I, and it's all the same as ever?_

But what wasn't the same as ever, he noticed as the door opened and bathed the poorly living room with the dying glow of a night beginning, was the shaggy figure standing proudly in the middle of the room. His hand drifted cautiously toward the wand held by his belt, ready to rush to his own defense at the slightest provocation. The figure seemed to notice Remus's preventive movement, because it stiffened considerably— but when it spoke, Remus found himself utterly disarmed.

"Do you really not recognize _me_ , Remus?"

He may not have been able to tell him apart from a backlit, darkened outline, but Remus would know that voice anywhere.

" _Sirius_ ," he cried with a mixture of relief and unbridled happiness, and Sirius rushed forward to keep him from swooning off his feet, finally overtaken by the wave of exhaustion he'd been fighting through, but could no longer ignore.

"Careful, careful," Sirius muttered, steadying Remus back on his feet and taking care not to let go until he was certain he'd recovered his balance. "You're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good, just tired..." Remus mumbled, then shook his head in bewilderment and looked right at Sirius. "And what are _you_ doing here, anyway? Aren't you some sort of a fugitive now?"

"Well, yes," Sirius said, a brief laugh sending a familiar (but long-lost) devilish glint into his eyes. "Buckbeak's tied out back, he's got a Disillusionment charm over him. Can't say he's too happy, but he seems to know at least he's not awaiting his execution. I'll be on the run tomorrow, I'll go into hiding, but I knew..." he took a deep breath and reached to take Remus's hand weakly in his own. "I knew I couldn't go without seeing you."

Remus's heart leaped faintly, but conspicuously, in his chest. "You broke into my house and put yourself in danger to see me?"

"First of all, I'm not sure this old mess can be properly called a _house_ ," quipped Sirius, wrinkling his nose, and Remus smiled to himself at the glimpse of the picky, sarcastic Sirius he'd fallen in love with so long ago. "Second of all, that meant it's not particularly hard to break into. And last..." he said, drawing closer to Remus and taking his other hand now, their faces almost touching. "Remus, I'd've done anything to see you. It's all that's kept me sane for the past twelve years."

"You're just being gallant," Remus chuckled quietly, turning his face the other way, but Sirius took a hand up to his cheek and gently tilted his face back to look at him.

"No. I mean it." Behind his matted hair and beside the crow's feet that now lined his face (when had Sirius's jovial face withered like this?), his eyes shone with honesty, and a million words unsaid, locked behind bars for as long as he'd been.

And only then did Remus allow himself to kiss him.

As if letting go of a constraint holding him back, as if a chain across his chest had broken, he leaned forward and pressed his lips urgently to Sirius's, in a hungry kiss that he'd thought he'd never get to taste again. Sirius kissed back immediately, standing up taller to reach Remus better, tilting his head and opening his mouth a bit more to nip at his lower lip in the way he knew made Remus weak at the knees. Just so he knew that, after all these years, after all they'd been through, he hadn't forgotten— how could he?

Remus pulled away clumsily, but looked back at Sirius with a new smile and new energy. "You remembered."

"You'd think I forget? When I had so much time in that cell —twelve long years— to think about that tiny sigh you let out when I bite you a little?"

"We're not teenagers anymore, Sirius," Remus smiled out of the corner of his mouth, knowing full well what that impish expression meant when Sirius bore it.

"Oh, come on, it was hard enough to keep my hands off you long enough in front of Harry," Sirius threw himself softly at Remus again, wrapping his arms around his waist, and settling his head contentedly in _his_ nook at Remus's chest.

"Leave it to you to be horny at the Shrieking Shack," snorted Remus, nonetheless bringing a hand up to Sirius's matted hair to stroke it. Why did this feel so familiar, so _right_ , when the floor had shifted so dramatically under their feet?

"Let me make you some tea," Remus said gently, releasing Sirius and heading toward the small kitchenette at the back of the cottage. Positively glowing at the sheer privilege it was to set out two instead of just one, Remus set two chipped porcelain teacups on a musty wooden table, inviting Sirius to sit in one of the accompanying, about-to-collapse chairs. He turned back toward the stove and filled a dented kettle with water, setting it to boil before rummaging through the cupboards for the bag of loose-leaf black tea he knew had to be around there somewhere.

Sirius watched him work from behind, a lazy smile stretching happily along his lips. "I always said you'd make a good housewife," he joked, and Remus turned around to give him a glance of mock exasperation. "I mean it! You cook without magic, you offer people tea without being asked, you know your way around a kitchen... I do believe we could've gotten old Walburga around to loving you, if it weren't for the fact that you're, y'know, _a man._ "

"Quite a tragedy, isn't it?" said Remus, doling out a spoonful of tea leaves into his and Sirius's teacups. "I mean, you could've told her that I'm _technically_ not a 'man' in the purist sense of the word, but I don't think in my case it would've worked in her favor."

"What do you mean? She might've preferred a werewolf in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black than, you know, a son who turned out to be a _sodomite_ ," he spat out the last word, in such an uncanny imitation of his mother that Remus couldn't help but laugh.

"Why the werewolf?" he said, taking the kettle off the stove and pouring the steaming water into their cups.

"Because it may have given off, I dunno, an _aura_ of gloom not unlike the one always hanging around her."

"You're saying she would've preferred the werewolf out of aesthetic value?" Remus said, sliding into the chair in front of Sirius's.

"The woman has a fucking family tree _tapestry_ as the centerpiece of her house, of course she would've gone for the aesthetic value," Sirius said, sipping slowly from his cup. "Being gay, of course, is not quite as glamorous."

"You wouldn't know that from knowing _you_."

"Well, I tend to be an exception," Sirius said, gesturing exaggeratedly toward the ragged Azkaban robes he was still wearing. "I make even prison clothes look fashionable."

"You never had trouble making anything look good," said Remus with a lopsided smile. Sirius returned it, but there was a certain sadness in it, and that bittersweetness hung in the air for a moment, in utter silence except for the muffled gurgling of tea being sipped and the arrhythmic ticking of the old pendulum clock that hung by the main door.

Finally, Sirius broke the silence: he finished his tea and set his cup aside with a small _clink!_ , turning to Remus with clasped hands and a much more serious expression. "So what happened?"

"Pardon?"

"Remus, you finally landed your dream job since school after years of living in poverty, and I know you wouldn't have come back here if you hadn't lost it. So what happened?"

Remus sighed, set his teacup aside, and buried his face in his hands: "I knew this would come up..."

"So you're not going to answer me?"

"What is there to say?" said Remus, raising his head from his palms and forcing a smile to appear on his face. "Severus told on my, well, my furry little problem," he finished, unable to resist a little smile at the resurgence of their teenage euphemism.

"Wouldn't past it past Snivellus," snarled Sirius, looking away from the table and past Remus's dirty square window. "You saw his face when he thought he'd get to turn us both in, you would've thought Christmas —or whatever it is he celebrates— came early..." He whipped his head back to face Remus, refocusing his attention and narrowing his eyes to fix his glance upon him. "Wait a second. Dumbledore would've never sacked you over something like that— look at how he's protected Hagrid, and we all know he's... well, to put it nicely, he's not all human either. And to turn _you_ , surely one of the most brilliant professors at Hogwarts, out for _that_? No, something else had to happen." Remus looked uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and looking anywhere but at Sirius— who knew that meant he had hit the nail exactly on the head. "So what was it?"

"Fine! I broke down," blurted Remus abruptly, banging against the table with a hit that sent the teacups rattling. He regained his bearings with a calm breath, and sighed before speaking again, more softly this time. "I went into Dumbledore's office and I let him have it. Years ago, when... when Lily and James were murdered," he shuddered with the memory of that night, "after everything that happened, I told Dumbledore I knew it couldn't have been you. I always knew, deep down —since then, even— that you were innocent. But he didn't listen to me, and he let you go to Azkaban and didn't say anything more about it. So the night after you and Buckbeak escaped, I barged into his office and told him that I'd known all along, and that he _had_ to know too, so why had he let you rot in _there_ all those years even when I'd pleaded with him about it? He looked tired— he said he'd had a feeling that you'd been innocent, but his hands were tied. I knew what that meant— that he knew, all along, but he couldn't bother checking. I knew I couldn't continue working under him after that, not for my own vanity, after what he did to you because he refused to act upon his better judgment. So I quit."

Sirius sat in stunned silence for a few seconds. "You quit?" Remus nodded furiously, still seething with the anger he'd no doubt unleashed upon the elderly headmaster that day. "You quit your dream job for me, and you have the audacity to tell me _I'm_ reckless for being here."

"Some things are more important than others," Remus said, smiling sadly, and Sirius reached his hand across the table to hold his. "I told him he could blame it on the parents' complaints, Merlin knows there's been enough of that already... that part about Severus tattling wasn't a lie."

"I don't doubt it," said Sirius, his hand reaching even further to send a thumb softly along the faded scars that lined Sirius's face. "No one asked about these?"

"A few first years did, but I told them I'd gotten them fighting dark wizards," Remus replied, his smile now turning amused, as he placed his own hand above Sirius's, keeping it pressed firmly on his cheek. "They thought I was the coolest man on the planet after that."

"Clearly, they hadn't met me—"

"Well, considering they only knew you as an alleged mass murderer, I wouldn't exactly blame them for that," Remus said, shifting his face slightly so his lips would touch Sirius's palm briefly. "Only Harry knows. I told him everything the day I packed up."

"Harry," Sirius tried to say through a smile, but it was clear how much it pained him to even think about him— about everything that _could've_ been, but _wasn't_. "Do you ever think about how differently things would've turned out if we'd raised him?"

"I thought about it every time I saw him," Remus answered, his mind flashing to every time he'd seen Harry perform brilliantly in his class and felt a pang of bittersweet pride at being able to say _he'd_ taught him that— just like he wished he'd done for so many other parts of his childhood. "I'll never forgive Dumbledore for that, either. Sending him off to those horrible Muggles instead of giving him to us. I think he might be so much happier now if only he'd grown up _loved_."

"Love does tend to make a difference, doesn't it," Sirius sighed, and Remus could tell it was now directed at him. "What about us? Do you ever wonder what might have happened if things were different— with us?"

"Every waking moment," spilled from Remus's lips without any hesitation, and now his other hand flew forward to clasp Sirius's. "I've missed you each day you were gone. For a while, I thought I couldn't go on without you— losing James and Lily was bad enough, but losing you almost dealt me the final blow. It seemed too good to be true when I saw your name on the Marauder's Map, and to be sitting here across from you, even in this shithole..." To his surprise, a stray tear rolled down his cheek. "And I can't bear the thought that one night is all we have to make up for lost time."

"Almost a lifetime," said Sirius softly, letting go of Remus's hands briefly to raise himself up to sit on the table closer to Remus than when the whole table stood between them. "And I wonder if I hadn't been there that night— if they'd had no excuse to pin it to me—"

"You were doing what you had to," Remus reassured him, again clasping his hands and squeezing them tight. "James knew what he was doing when he named you godfather. You _had_ to be there. It was just bad luck, that's all."

"I'd take all the bad luck in the world so long as it led me to this moment," whispered Sirius, and he leaned forward so his lips would meet Remus's again. Remus wrapped his arms around Sirius's midriff, feeling Sirius's own settle lovingly around his shoulders. They kissed ardently, urgently, fully aware of the brunt of the seconds ticking away on that old hanging clock, counting down each fleeting instant until they'd have to part ways again. But none of that was important now: they were here, and they were close again, everything they'd yearned for during twelve years apart materializing itself in the collision of their kiss. They never could've quite forgotten the taste of each other, but to taste it again, as their mouths moved in synchrony to sustain the kiss, was the all-too-precious bliss they'd craved for years. And, as their faces moved closer to each other, Remus could sense Sirius was crying— wet tears staining his sullen cheeks, as if replenishing them with a depth of emotion he thought he never would experience again.

As they pulled away, Sirius fell into Remus's arms, resting his head on his shoulder with the familiarity of comfort habitually sought. Remus tightened his embrace and pulled him closer, allowing himself to be overtaken by every sensation —the feel of his skin, his particular scent, the little sounds he emitted— that came with having Sirius back.

And it was almost too good to be true.

* * *

Remus knew his bed would be empty when he woke up, but it didn't make it any easier.

He and Sirius had spent the night in each other's arms, returning to the sleeping positions they'd grown so accustomed to in what little time they'd had after Hogwarts to live together. Sirius was invariably the little spoon, but they'd slept facing each other, with Sirius's head nestled cozily under Remus's chin and in the crook of his neck, both of his hands placed softly on his chest; one of Remus's hands always found its way up to the crown of Sirius's head, to press him closer to him and play with his hair (because he knew it helped him fall asleep more easily), and the other draped around his torso, to complete the embrace and let Remus trace little circles on Sirius's back (another tactic he knew Sirius loved falling asleep to). Their legs had been intertwined, bringing the warmth of each other's bodies closer, and they'd slept in this tight-knit tangle in the most comfortable, most blissfully dreamless slumber Remus remembered he'd had for years. They hadn't done anything else— just allowed themselves each other to _be_ with each other, to be marvelously _there_ , and that had been enough.

He vaguely remembered a flash of this morning, when the greying sky had not yet broken through with dawn's first rays, and he'd stirred in his bed when Sirius had left his arms to get on his way. He remembered a fleeting, passenger kiss pressed to his lips, still warm with the rubor of sleep's wake, and a murmured promise that this wouldn't be their last night like this.

He didn't doubt it, but to wake up with the other side of the bed cold and abandoned resembled the awful weeks after Sirius's imprisonment all too closely. Unable to collect himself, he let his legs fall from the bed and sat, bent over, at the bed's edge, burying his face in his hands and allowing the sobs to rack heavily from his chest as if mourning for a heart hopelessly shattered. It had been wonderful beyond measure, but he didn't know if he could bear it any longer, knowing that he'd had another night with the man he loved only to have it cruelly taken from him again.

Too numb to do anything beside it, he let his feet carry him robotically to the small, opaque window atop his nightstand, the one that faced the back yard of the cottage. He pulled the ratty curtain aside and looked out, into a clearing glimmering with incoming sunrise, where just a few hours earlier Buckbeak had been tied and concealed. He pictured Sirius out there this morning, coming to reverse the Disillusionment charm, untie Buckbeak, and soar off into the sky beyond the hills, whooping triumphantly and setting off for his next unknown adventure. Sirius, at heart, had always been a swashbuckler, and he knew that —despite, undoubtedly, the same heartbreak he must've undergone at leaving Remus behind—, he would be happier out there in the open than miserably locked away and cramped behind closed doors.

He felt his heart swell a little with something like joy, and he couldn't resist a minute smile as he looked beyond the confines of the clearing toward the horizon Sirius had no doubt taken no time to get lost in. He knew he'd come back— he could always count on Sirius, couldn't he? No matter how long it took, his Sirius would come back to him, where he knew he'd be waiting devotedly for it.

 _After all_ , he thought to himself with amusement, banging around the kitchenette with a little more cheer to brew himself the day's first cup of tea, _aren't housewives supposed to excel at waiting?_


End file.
